Well, that was a weekend of college football. Not a full one, really, but it was a weekend. There were games. Half the teams who played those games won them. The other half lost.
Here were the takeaways:
The Big Ten Schedule Ruled the Day
There wasn’t anything all that interesting about the Big Ten schedule, though punishing Nebraska for their insolence with a brutal opener was high comedy. But the release of it was noteworthy and was an important development in shaping our understanding of this particular college football season. Now, instead of asking about a hypothetical 11-0 Group of Five team comparing to a hypothetical one-loss Big Ten Champion, we can busy our minds asking about a hypothetical Group of Five team comparing to Ohio State-if-they-lose-once-but-it’s-to-Michigan-State-not-Penn-State-and-they-still-win-the-Big-Ten. And things of that sort.
Group of Five Possibilities Became More Clear
UCF’s probably the best bet for a Group of Five playoff appearer. It’s tradition now, but that doesn’t make it invalid. They beat Georgia Tech rather thoroughly on the road, and while that isn’t the most impressive thing to do, it was a better result than those of Louisiana-Lafayette (needed overtime to escape at Georgia State) or Marshall (held Appalachian State to seven points in Huntington, but only scored seventeen of their own). We’re focused on Group of Five teams right now because they’re interesting—they’re the CFP’s white whale, in a way. We want to know what they’d need to do to crack the field, and we’re curious if this could be the year, with other résumés potentially weakened by shortened schedules (though the absence of non-conference games does tend to actually strengthen the median quality of teams’ opponents…). So we’ll keep watching these guys, but UCF’s the leader at this stage.
We’ll See What the Numbers Say
Bill Connelly will release his SP+ ratings at some point today or tomorrow, I believe. And at that point we should better understand what to make of things like the ACC race (is Miami close to the ND/UNC tier?), UCF’s actual quality, and what to be the most excited about next weekend when the Big 12 and SEC open conference play, with Army visiting Cincinnati and Troy traveling to Provo in the Group of Five realm.
